Monday, June 7, 2010

California's Unpopular Politicians

We'd never done a public poll in California before last week and the thing I found most remarkable was how much voters in the state hate all of their politicians.

Arnold Schwarzenegger of course is the least popular Governor in the country with a 20/64 approval rating. The battle to replace him looks like it will be between someone marginally unpopular (Jerry Brown and his 37/39 favorability ratio) and someone very unpopular (Meg Whitman and her 24/44 favorability ratio.)

In the Senate race right now an unpopular incumbent (Barbara Boxer, 37/46 approval) is still favored for reelection because her likely opponent is just as unpopular (Carly Fiorina, 22/30 favorability and that's before the Democrats start really spending money on attacking the heck out of her.)

Even though the President is still marginally popular the 12 point drop from the 61% he won in the state to his current 49% approval rating is the largest we've seen in any state over the last three months.

Dianne Feinstein's breaking even at 41/41 seems like a monumental level of popularity in comparison to everyone else.

9 comments:

We have one of the worst state budget deficits. Schwarzenegger and the legislature are blamed. We have a high unemployment rate. We have the most undocumented immigrants.

We have Nancy Pelosi, who I'm sure has among the highest unfavorable ratings. We have Harry Waxman, a major lightning rod for the right.

Our senators didn't seem too concerned with the central valley water controversy and seem to be fairly ineffective.

And we're a notoriously anti-politician bunch. We insist on voting on the big stuff ourselves, through proposition, taking important decisions from the legislature. We were one of the first with term limits. Prop 13 was also one of the first of its kind.

We're no Illinois. Our politician aren't corrupt. We just see them as incompetent.

More to the point, UNIONS are increasing unpopular. Politicians in California and elsewhere are unpopular because they coddle labor unions.

Conversely, those who challenge labor unions find that it is the secret to popularity.

Unions are "the whipping boys for a new generation of governors who, thanks to a tanking economy and an assist from editorial boards, feel freer than ever to make political targets out of what was once a protected liberal class of teachers, cops, and other public servants.

Republicans around the nation have cheered New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, whose shouting match over budget cuts with an outraged teacher—“You don’t have to” teach, he told her without sympathy—became a YouTube sensation on the right last week.

And even Democrats, like the nominee for governor in New York, Andrew Cuomo, have echoed the attacks on unions.

Christie is merely the most florid voice for a calculated, national effort to fundamentally reshape the debate on the labor costs that account for the bulk of government spending at every level. And at the core of the shift is a perception among many political leaders that public anger at civil servants is boiling over."

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38183.html

Even left-leaning media outlets are becoming more vocally opposed to labor unionshttp://bigjournalism.com/tcowgill/2010/06/04/are-journalists-finally-getting-over-their-pro-teacher-union-fetish/

The message from California is to cut government spending, freeze union wages, and demand concessions on union benefits. And if labor unions don't accept concessions, dismiss the union and PRIVATIZE government services. Taxpayers deserve to be freed from their tyrannical labor union masters.

Is 49% approval really that low, considering how radical Obama's policies have been, how corrupt his administration and allies have been, and how Obama has been so arrogant and incompetent at the same time?

Two polls from Michigan suggest that Democrats may indeed be losing that much support.

Michael Barone has a great explanation for why Obama and the Democrats are hemorrhaging support in Michigan: "Evidently Michigan voters don’t think tax increases (Granholm’s response to dwindling revenues) and stimulus packages are the right public policies in a time of economic distress. While the Obama Democrats’ ratings remain relatively high in New York and California, where affluent secular liberals are one of the largest Democratic constituencies, they certainly are not doing so in Michigan, where such voters are a much smaller part of the electorate. Tentative conclusion: rich liberals may be able to afford Obamastimulus and Obamacare, but voters with modest incomes don’t think they can."

The Michigan polls show that PPP's California polls may not be so unreasonable when it comes to Obama's dwindling support. And PPP's California findings may show that the pace of long-time Democrats abandoning the party may be even more significant than previously believed.

Its the people of California that are to blame for the mess its in. They have contined to elect liberal fools and weak republican RINO's. Ronald was the last and only great politician to ever come out of western "freak fest." You want things to chage; stop voting for assholes who will sell you down the river. BE A TRUE CONSERVTIVE...

If the Democratic Party doesn't become more like Mickey Kaus and less dependent on greedy labor unions and hispanic lobbies, the Democratic Party will be doomed... and the Republican party will responsibly make the cuts in government and union contracts that Democrats were too childish to do.